I judiciously wonder what percent of the morbidly obese are in the bracket that already pays zero in income taxes, however. It would be a regressive tax of poor taste, though i do believe that something should be done

There is a word that he is an East German engineered android ():

It's not actually a new concept.

Doctors in Great Britain have been advocating it for years as a way to get National Healthcare costs down.

EDIT: Oh this is about a tax on unhealthy foods.   These have been shown to generally be HUGE disasters.

Well at least from a prevention standpoint.   They just don't work.  People just spend more money.  Usually the poor.

Good for public revenue though.

The average montly income of a morbidly obese person I believe is $2,500 a month or so.  Which is like...

There is also the race differential if your going to worry about something like that.   I just read an interesting article about obesity and African American women.  4 out of 5 black women are seriously overweight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/why-black-women-are-fat.html?_r=1

Controversial, but the statistics are there.

I support people eating and putting whatever they want in their body.

Statistically, the obese, smokers and drug addicts die sooner. Sure they are a burden on health care when they get ill. But they often die and save us money in the long run. They save us money by not collecting pensions, medicare, and other services paid for by taxes.

Dead people also need funerals. Funerals are also expensive and you gotta tax them. So they kinda pay taxes even in death.

I can believe it. I was in Pittsburgh 2 days ago, and the handicapped section of the city buses were occupied completely by enormous black women.

I was able to come to that conclusion way back in the late 90s while walking around Cedar Point (amusement park in Ohio).  It is very rare to find a healthy older black lady (usually the only black ladies healthy at my job are from foreign countries like Kenya, etc).  Hispanic women are just as bad (men also).  I believe that over 80% of the Hispanics that work at my manufacturing plant are overweight / obese.  When minorities resort to most of their meals coming from McDonalds, Whataburger, KFC, etc then it is easy to realize the main problem (poor diet and lack of exercise).

Oh, and the non controversial way is to be smart about it.

Instead of taxing people, you offer people a "tax break" for being healthy.

It's been a trick companies have been using for years. Do a few of these healthy activities off the list and your copay goes down.

How about just ending all the subsidies for corn? That saves money, makes people healthier, and appeases me.

They should subsidize fruits and veggies (the good ones aka not corn which is turned into high fructose corn syrup).  Something is terribly wrong when you can buy 1000+ calories for 1 - 2 dollars of junk food / fast food yet have to spend way more money on what we should be eating in the first place.  The USA food system completely sucks and it is pretty obvious that corporations have led the USA diet to shit while profiting off of junk food that fatties can't resist.